ABSTRACT
Using the concepts and principles of conversation analysis (CA), this paper examines the everyday, unscripted, spontaneous conversations between 4 males who communicated with the aid of speech-output technologies and their mothers. The analyses focused on describing the conversationalists' various actions in aided turn-transition processes, resulting in a 3-part turn-transition structure used to accomplish aided turn initiation. Despite the challenges to conversational progress, the participants did not consider the conversational speed a challenge. The participants and their mothers were oriented to the progression of the aided conversation by creating interaction practices to achieve successful turn-transitions. By understanding the structural characteristics of fluent aided conversations, it may be possible to develop effective interaction strategies for communication partners and for augmentative and alternative communication technologies that are intentionally designed to facilitate interactive communication.
Subject(s)
Communication Aids for Disabled , Communication Disorders/rehabilitation , Mother-Child Relations , Adolescent , Autoimmune Diseases of the Nervous System/rehabilitation , Brain Stem Infarctions/rehabilitation , Cerebral Palsy/rehabilitation , Child , Humans , Male , Nervous System Malformations/rehabilitation , Severity of Illness IndexABSTRACT
This study examines lexical intervention sessions in speech and language therapy for children with cochlear implants (CIs). Particular focus is on the therapist's professional practices in doing the therapy. The participants in this study are three congenitally deaf children with CIs together with their speech and language therapist. The video recorded therapy sessions of these children are studied using conversation analysis. The analysis reveals the ways in which the speech and language therapist formulates her speaking turns to support the children's lexical learning in task interaction. The therapist's multimodal practices, for example linguistic and acoustic highlighting, focus both on the lexical meaning and the phonological form of the words. Using these means, the therapist expands the child's lexical networks, specifies and corrects the meaning of the target words, and models the correct phonological form of the words. The findings of this study are useful in providing information for clinicians and speech and language therapy students working with children who have CIs as well as for the children's parents.
